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Europe’s Reality Check

Europe's sense of itself as a safe and secure place disintegrated this summer. The tide of refugees flowing over its borders directly confronted the EU with the harsh realities from which it had appeared to be a sanctuary – realities which only European solidarity can address.

BERLIN – Until a few weeks ago, Europeans believed they lived in a kind of sanctuary, insulated from the world’s current conflicts. Certainly, the news and images of drowned migrants were dreadful; but the tragedy occurring south of Italy, Greece, and Malta, seemed a long way off.

Syria’s brutal civil war, which has been raging for years, seemed even farther away. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deployed poison gas and later barrel bombs filled with nails and metal fragments against his rebellious population. And those who escaped Assad’s henchmen found themselves confronted by the terror of the Islamic State. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions of Syrians have fled, with most living in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey for years, in appalling conditions and with no hope of improvement.

So, sometime this summer, when the last glimmer of hope of a return to Syria disappeared and an alternative to Assad and the Islamic State no longer seemed realistic, these people started heading toward Europe, which seemed to promise a future of peace, freedom, and security. The refugees came via Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan states, or across the Mediterranean to escape similar chaos in Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.

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Joschka Fischer was German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998-2005, a term marked by Germany's strong support for NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, followed by its opposition to the war in Iraq. Fischer entered electoral politics after participating in the anti-establishment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and played a key role in founding Germany's Green Party, which he led for almost two decades.

If the USA is withdrawing, it is largely due to the lessons Mr. Fischer gave us about the nature of our European allies.

The multi-polar world of a Paris-Moscow-Berlin Axis, China, and the USA with all of them equally weak (and presumably with the Axis siding with China to put the USA in check) was all the passion of Mr. Fischer, Mr. Schroeder, and Mr. Chirac when they were in power.

That he would complain about the USA withdrawing is simply incredible.

Fischer in common with many ignores two key facts. First in no small part the scale of the iris is due to Merkel's ill-advised statement that 800k refugees would come this year. Her phrasing was open to being interpreted as being an invitation, one which Syrians and others took up almost in panic lest they arrive after the rest.
Second, for all the talk about opportunity nd solidarity, Fischer ignores the huge number of unemployed, especially young, who are not getting a similar treatment from Germany. This is sowing the seeds of a very major social problem.
Fischer and others are so busy prosing solidarity and humanitarianism that they ignore the fundamental issue. We owe refugees help in surviving the immediate misery of fleeing their homes. That extends to helping them settle at least temporarily in the countries they have reached in the ME. We dont owe them a free choice about where they would like to live. Brussels continues to live in a disconnected world. Half of Europe is suffering austerity but Brussels is increasing its budget and mandating expenditures in member states without consultation.

Those who call themselves "convinced Europeans" have become a security risk for Europe. They have lost contact with reality as well as contact with the peoples of Europe. Their plans to abolish the nations of Europe are reckless and simply dangerous. Core European values as democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of opinion and the rule of law are now under constant attack (Greek citizens are forced to endure "austerity" against their will, Hungarian citizens are forced to receive illegal immigrants against their will, German citizens are forced to settle gigantic transfer payments against their will and against the law, unregistered illegal immigrants and terrorists free flowing all over Europe, critical opinion is stigmatized and so on).

The "convinced Europeans" destabilize Europe, they lack popular support (otherwise they could just hold referenda to accomplish political union), they stand against history, they stand against Europe - they should just not be trusted any longer.

Joschka Fischer has a piece of advice to EU leaders facing the refugee crisis. They should under no circumstances "sell out Ukraine's interests", by lifting sanctions against Russia over its conflict with Ukraine, in return for Vladimir Putin's ostensible plan to combat ISIS. He insists they "should avoid the kind of dismal realpolitik that would betray its core values elsewhere."
Indeed, Putin has pleaded with the West to take on ISIS, hoping to come in from the cold and force an end to the diplomatic isolation that Russia is facing, following the annexation of Crimea and the Russian-backed separatist movement in Eastern Ukraine. The military intervention in Syria also serves to draw attention away from the conflict in Ukraine and the gloomy outlook for Russia's economy. At the same time it ought to burnish Putin's own image at home as a point man for international crises. On the world stage, he wants to boost Russia's international standing that it is an indispensible power in geopolitics.
Yet Soviet nostalgia plays another role in Putin's adventure in Syria. Since 1971 the Russians have maintained a naval facility at Tartus in Syria. It is the only remaining overseas base outside the country. The desire to protect Russia's relevance and influence in the Middle East has always been a chapter of Russia's history throughout centuries.
No doubt the influx of refugees from Syria to Europe would only be stopped with an end to the brutal civil war. Fischer urges EU leaders not to be fooled by the Kremlin’s motives and take a "reality check", maintaining, any "cooperation with Russia", however badly needed, "must not come at the expense of third parties and Western interests and unity."
He also reminds of "past mistakes" that European leaders had sought "to redeem", only to find themselves "making even bigger ones". No doubt Fischer means Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, which marked a brutal end to the relative calm in Europe since the Soviet Union's collapse. World leaders thought this was an one-off incident and had not taken a tougher stance against Russia.
So apart from logistical and organisational solutions to the refugee crisis, Fischer urges us to contemplate Europe's future and to choose between "back to a continent of nation-states" and "forward to a community of shared values". He is right about the EU after six decades of shared goals and interests finding it difficult to return to a "renationalization of politics". He wants us to be "convinced Europeans" and to "marshal all their strength – and muster all their nerve – in the times ahead."

I'll leave it to Europeans to sort out the problems with the Schengen agreement, but Fischer is certainly right about Russia's goals in Syria. It is looking to establish some leverage over Europe by threatening to prolong the war and the refugee crisis. It's interesting, though, that Putin is willing to risk a confrontation with the US, and a replay of the Soviet Union's fiasco in Afghanistan for such small stakes. That suggests desperation, and weakness.

Indeed, let us not forget who is interested in destabilizing Europe by first wreaking havoc in the ME (as part of its war against Islam, with which it shares core beliefs - which is why the two cannot stand each other, as a result of psychological projection) and then pushing the results (as vast numbers of refugees) into Europe. For whoever is interested int his point, there is a lot of information, albeit not easily to be found.

"The EU will be able to address the challenge . . . of integrating the newcomers only together and in the spirit of European solidarity."
Mr. Fischer, please trouble yourself to look at the empirical reality of Muslim integration into European societies. The record throughout is that a large percentage of Muslim immigrants have failed to integrate and have no desire or intention of integrating if integrating means accepting the liberal and secular values of western democratic societies that as they see it are fundamentally opposed to their faith. Don't you get it, Mr. Fischer? This is why there is so much and so rapidly growing an opposition to this massive Muslim immigration.

You write, ". . . the renationalization of politics within the EU . . . is not a result of the refugee crisis." This is so contrary to the facts I had to pause and consider if it were some kind of a joke. And then I realized it is a joke, a logic joke: since renationalization was extent before the crisis, the crisis didn't cause it. So therefore the crisis didn't cause it to increase a thousand fold. As a matter of fact, Mr. Fischer, this is exactly what the crisis is doing.

There is one exception to your general disassociation from what's going on. If the leadership of the EU doesn't come to terms with the opposition to this flood of Muslim immigrants there will indeed be grave consequences. Of which you may have to wait no longer than the upcoming élections régionales in France.

(corrected version!) I agree with Joschka Fischer's summary of the background. Germany is also to be applauded and supported because of its stance and performance on the issue. But I am sorely disappointed with his proposals for future E.U. policy and action. In regard to developing a new and effective system for securing Europe's boundaries with the rest of the world, he suggests "money" as the first item on a list of measures to stabilize Middle East, North African, and Eastern European neighbours. Money was developed as a means of simplifying market activities. Today it has become the means for turning citizens into consumers, subverting political states with global corporations, and commodifying human values and ethics. And for what? To allow major world powers, both political and commercial, to continue their insane efforts to dominate limited planetary resources, oil, water, minerals, and money itself, in the deluded belief that this "growth" obsession can continue even when the planet is denuded, exhausted of its resources, and the human race has become extinct. This is an insane dream, a trance-like progression of zombies, devouring and destroying all before them. If you don't understand or accept that image, then how about seeing it as a zero-sum game.

I agree with Joschka Fischer's summary of the background. Germany is also to applauded and supported because of its stance and performance on the issue. But I am sorely disappointed that in his proposals for future E.U. policy and action. In regard to developing a new and effective system for securing Europe boundary with the rest of the world, he suggests "money" as the first item on a list of measures to stabilize Middle East, North African, and Eastern European neighbours. Money was developed as a means of simplifying market activities. Today it has become the means for turning citizens into consumers, subverting political states with global corporations, and commodifying human values and ethics. And for what? To allow major world powers, both pollitical and commercial, to continue their insane efforts to dominate limited planetary resources, oil, water, minerals, and money itself in the deluded belief that this "growth" obsession can continue even when the planet is denuded, exhausted of its resources, and the human race has become extinct. This is an insane dream, a trance-like progression of zombies, devouring and destroying all before them. If you don't understand or accept that image, then how about seeing it as a zero-sum game.

No political leader, in a Real Democratic society, should serve more than Two (2) terms in office. The rules that apply to the private sector must apply to the public sector as well and no one should be immune from responsibility or accountability. Too many mistakes were made by the current political leaders, including and more especially the German ones.

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